


pockets stuffed with kings and aces

by blueskypenguin



Series: turning points [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3799570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueskypenguin/pseuds/blueskypenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He just had to give the boys the facts straight this time: no lessons, no Tricks. If he was going to do this, he'd have to do this as Gabriel, or not at all. </i>
</p><p><i>So much for his witness protection, then.</i><br/> </p><p>Beginning of an AU S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pockets stuffed with kings and aces

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted in parts on LJ a few years ago, I've taken what I had, cleaned it up and added a bit more to it. I had originally intended to follow S4 pretty closely but I'm feeling mischievous so that may change. Enjoy, let me know what you think.

"Well, well, well," Gabriel rocked back on his heels. "This is unexpe- nah, who am I kidding? I totally saw this one coming."

"Fuck off."

He ignored Sam, because he was an undercover archangel and he was _not_ taking orders from a drunken, sweaty, vomit- and tear-stained potential vessel. He told Sam as much, although not the vessel part because he wasn't an _idiot_ , adding, "but at least you're not hunting me this time."

Sam, face down on the crappy bed, breathing noisily from his mouth groaned. "Can you bring him back?"

"Not me," Gabriel lied, because he certainly could if he tried. "But I have a feeling someone else will."

He watched Sam's brow furrow, processing, then he pushed himself up into a swaying upright position. "He's coming back?"

Gabriel shrugged. He had a feeling whichever angel the Host sent to pull Dean from the Pit would be just a little too late to stop the breaking of the first Seal, meaning Deano wouldn't be sunshine and daisies in the best case scenario. But even if they were a day late or a year, he could stop Lucifer's release and it would all be moot anyway.

He just had to give the boys the facts straight this time: no lessons, no Tricks. Apparently they didn't respond well to that, judging by the sorry state Sam was in. Plus, the Host would be tapping Dean pretty regularly after his release... He'd have no hope of shielding himself for too long against whichever Seraph takes the elder Winchester as his charge.

If he was going to do this, he'd have to do this as Gabriel, or not at all.

So much for his witness protection, then.

"Dean's coming back, Sammy," Gabriel said eventually, "and he won't be alone. You're gonna sober up, sleep this off and then I am gonna tell you a story about a couple of brothers..."

“I’m not tired,” Sam protested, sitting up. The wave of nausea that simple motion caused, however, overrode any sleepiness; the kid was wasted. “Talk.”

Gabriel sighed, “Look, this is going to be a mind-fuck after a coffee, a solid eight hours and a feast so what makes you think that drunk, weak and dead on your feet is going to make it any easier?”

“I don’t want easier, I want my brother back!”

“I promise you, he’s going to come back,” he swore, trying to put a little grace into it – it clearly hit Sam as intended because he gaped, awed. Score one for epic, rolling waves of angelic power. “But I don’t know when. He’s been gone two weeks, he could be gone a long while yet.”

“Oh, well that’s so helpful,” Sam replied scathingly.

Gabriel glared, “I’m going to let that go due to extenuating circumstances. Now I don’t want to knock you out by force but I can and I will if you’re going to be an ass.”

He threw up his hands in a mockery of surrender. “I’m gonna take a shower first, I guess. That okay?”

“Yep,” Gabriel grinned, popping his ‘p’ loudly. “If you want, I can come back in the morning? Or did you have plans to hit up a crossroads?” He pointedly didn’t look at the stash of graveyard dirt and bones on the dresser, a box all prepped and ready.

Sam looked from the dresser to Gabriel, and shrugged, “Not anymore. Stick around?”

He clicked himself up a plush armchair and sprawled over it as Sam stood shakily and ensconced himself in the bathroom with a groan. To Gabriel, the rush of running water sounded strangely like victory.

 

\--

Sam had all but crawled from bathroom to bed hours ago, and Gabriel wasn’t ashamed to admit at least to himself that he was watching the boy sleep. He’d adjusted the temperature in the crappy motel room, cleaned the sheets with a click and fluffed the pillows for good measure. And if he was gently guiding Sam’s psyche away from nightmares about Dean’s death, then it was all for the greater good.

He was going to wake up after the best night of sleep he’d had in months and then Gabriel was going to have to reveal himself, wings and all. It was a frightening prospect after millennia undercover, but necessary.

It was an uncomfortable twitch of his wings that alerted him to something wrong in the motel in the first place – demons, two of them, moving up the stairs and undoubtedly headed right for this room. He stood out of the chair, got rid of the chocolate bar he’d been enjoying – all the more reason to relish a little exorcism, it’d been a while – and moved to Sam’s side.

“Sam,” he pulled him from his dreams as carefully as he could, “Wake up.”

He caught Sam’s hand as it reached for the knife, but as clarity overcame the sleepy ingrained reaction, he let go. “There are two demons coming along this hallway, headed here, for you. Ready for a little show and tell?”

“Yeah,” Sam whispered roughly as Gabriel stepped away, taking up position behind the door.

“Stay in bed. And Sam – if I tell you to close your eyes,” not that two demons were likely to be any trouble; he wasn’t that out of practice, “then damn well close ‘em.”

The kid was confused, but more than likely too adrenaline pumped and hungover to argue.

Gabriel unlocked the door with a thought and slid the chain off its hook; the demons were going to get into this room without a problem. He didn’t want this spilling into the hallway where they could get away. The door-handle turned quietly, the mechanism opening with a soft snick. He pressed himself against the wall as Sam managed to get into a convincing sleep position that put him in full view of Gabriel and the two newcomers.

The man opened the door with care and purpose, the woman trailing behind, shutting the door behind her. Neither of them saw Gabriel. “Wake him up,” she ordered and the man turned to her quizzically. “I want to see his face when he works out who’s gonna kill him.”

The man shrugged, walking forward.

Gabriel shook his head, “Let’s not wake the kid, huh? Long day, I only just got him down.”

The woman swung around, lashing out with a knife fluidly, but Gabriel was quicker, blocking the surprised demon with a hand to her throat and another to her wrist. It would be easy to twist her arm around and stick her with her own weapon; instead he took the executive decision to exorcise her snarling lackey first and from three feet away, just to make a point.

The woman’s black eyes widened in terror as the demon flared from the inside out, dead and gone with only a thought. “Who are you?” She still asked, forced bravado. It was almost admirable, Gabriel smirked.

“More importantly,” he twisted her wrist until she was forced to drop her blade, “Who are you, and why are you trying to kill the baby Winchester?”

“Not,” she whimpered, the grip on her throat tightening, “I was supposed to...”

It looked like he’d shown up just in time after all. “Ah, so _you_ are Lilith’s choice of puppet-master for Sammy’s strings.”

“Lilith?” Sam had slipped out of bed as Gabriel had wasted the first demon, and he was staring at the woman as if he- “ _Ruby_?”

“You know her?”

“The demon, yeah,” Sam frowned. “Lilith sent her back to Hell the same night Dean...”

Gabriel didn’t have to look at Sam to know he was stumbling soberly over his brother’s memory and he tried to draw him away from it. “Well, Ruby here is on Lilith’s payroll now, aren’t you?”

And recognising she was hopelessly outclassed, Ruby nodded. “Doesn’t matter. Smite first, ask questions later. I’m dead and we’re all screwed. If you’re... we’re _fucked_ a dozen ways from Sunday.”

“Damn right you are, sweetheart,” Gabriel replied cheerily, and with a tightening of his fingers around her neck just for the fun of it, he burned her right out of the poor salesgirl she was possessing. With a thought he sent the salesgirl to her home to her own bed, where he hoped she’d just wake up thinking it was all a horrible nightmare. The man was dead, nothing to be done for him, but Gabriel sent his body home too, knowing his sister would come looking for him in a day or so.

And now there was just him and Sam in the motel room, no blood or bile and barely a scent of sulphur in the air. It was like the last ten minutes hadn’t happened, except: “What are you?”

“Straight to the point, huh?” He didn’t want to answer, still wasn’t even sure how to but he’d had known for two weeks that he’d have to at some point, had known since he decided on this crazy scheme to halt the frickin’ apocalypse. He supposed he wanted to see if Sam could figure it out. “What do you think I am?”

“You’re not a Trickster. Or at least,” he qualified as Gabriel twisted his lips mockingly, “not just a Trickster.”

“Warm.”

“You exorcised Ruby and that other demon with a thought,” Sam continued, running a hand through his hair and turning away from Gabriel to sit back down on the bed. Whatever Sam was thinking he was, he’d clearly decided Gabriel was on his side, which was, you know, helpful.

“More or less, so warmer still.”

“And...” It was just like watching a cartoon character have a really good idea, and it almost made Gabriel laugh aloud (even as the involuntary wave of panic rolled over him) as Sam came to all the right conclusions. “Ruby said ‘smite’. Are you...”

“Am I what, Sam?” Gabriel prompted softly when Sam’s voice trailed off without the answer. “Go on.”

Sam shuddered out a deep breath. “Are you an angel?”

Gabriel sighed, and it wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought it would be to have someone point him out after so long. He brought back his armchair and sank into it gratefully. “I always knew you were the smarter brother.”

“Which? Which angel are you?” Sam’s voice was quiet, low and reverent which was all the things Gabriel hadn’t come to expect from the Winchesters.

The truth, at this point, was better than any trick. “Gabriel. They call me Gabriel.”

“Oh my god,” Sam exclaimed, instantly looking stricken which did make Gabriel laugh aloud, a crack of sound in the silent summer night.

“Calm down, Sammy, it’s not like I haven’t broken a few commandments myself. Heck, even Moses couldn’t help himself where his neighbour’s wife was concerned.”

Sam gaped at him. “You’re joking.”

“Maybe,” Gabriel smirked, the expression widening to a grin as Sam rolled his eyes. “Regardless, bringing dear old Dad’s name out in vain isn’t a smite-able offence nowadays.” He tried to ignore the bitter tone his voice had taken on talking about his Father. Instead, he conjured coffee - without a click, just to prove that he could - and watched Sam shake his head.

Sam swallowed a mouthful of perfect-temperature coffee slowly, averting his eyes too much for Gabriel’s liking. “Is that why you can’t rescue Dean? Because you’re ...an archangel?”

Then again, if Sam wouldn’t look at him, he wouldn’t see Gabriel’s guilty wince. “Okay, here’s the deal. I skipped out of Heaven millennia ago and I’ve been hiding as a Trickster ever since. I started as Loki and I never turned back. Until now,” he took a deep breath, unnecessary but as he realised he needed to tell the whole truth here and that was not going to be fun. Although, watching Sam’s eyes get wider and his eyebrows climb higher up his forehead was an interesting experiment.

He stood up and started pacing; he’d always had a lot of nervous energy. Perhaps it was all the sugar; his brothers were always so still in their vessels. “I could, right now, waltz down into the Pit and pull Dean out, but this is bigger than saving your brother from Hell; this is about the Apocalypse.”

“The Apocalypse?” Sam flexed his hands around the mug of coffee and finally let his face relax into quiet scepticism.

Gabriel gestured wildly, “The Judeo-Christian Apocalypse, admittedly, but all it takes is one and if Heaven and Hell get their way, it’ll be _the one_.” He debated for a moment, telling Sam the next piece of the puzzle, but it would only count against him when Dean came back and wasn’t who he used to be. He took a seat next to Sam, knowing he couldn’t look at the kid for this part. Sam didn’t shift away, which was a source of some comfort to him. “Dean is in Hell because the powers above and below need him to do something to get the ball rolling, and as much as it pains me, he is going to do it. He’s going to have to do it.”

Sam cleared his throat. “What is he going to do?”

“I... it’s not my place to say,” Gabriel chickened out, barrelling on. “And there’s nothing we can reasonably do to stop it, but once he’s out? Then it’s down to you, Sam, and that we can stop; we are stopping it, right here and right now.”

“Why us?” Sam turned to look squarely at Gabriel, “Why me and Dean, we’re just two people.”

“Oh, kiddo, you’re so much more than just ‘people’,” He stood and brought his chair back. Sinking into it, he rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward and doing his best to keep Sam’s attention. “You see, angels – be they your dime-a-dozen Seraphim or an archangel – need vessels to appear on Earth.”

Sam frowned, “Possession?”

“Not as you understand it, no. Angels need permission from the vessel to enter.”

“Who are you wearing?” The tone was curious, with a hint of disapproval. Gabriel fought the urge to roll his eyes at the ubiquitous do-good attitude of the Winchester brothers. It was like he didn’t hear the whole permission thing, which was ironic considering it was the key to everything heaven and hell wished to achieve.

“My own, painstaking design and not an ounce of human; but that’s a story for another day,” or another lifetime, more likely. He wasn’t getting into the details of the whole Loki experience until he’d dealt with his first life. With any luck, they’d derail this Apocalypse and keep the pagans out of it. He shuddered to think what Lucifer would do to them if he got out of his cage. “Archangels are more powerful and we can’t just take any human vessel, there are certain requirements. Michael and Lucifer-”

“Lucifer? As in... Lucifer?”

“Cut the echo, Sam,” Gabriel felt suddenly weary.

He just wanted to get all for this out there and maybe he could go back to his little anonymous pagan life when the dust settled. He wanted to laugh, it was so preposterous; heaven would hold him accountable once they found out and he’d be lucky to escape death by Michael’s hand. Of course, he was working under the assumption that either their Father didn’t know or didn’t care what happened, so either way he was screwed. Either Daddy knows, and he fucks up the grand plan out of some ridiculous, ineffable need to protect these brothers and the selfish desire to avoid more fratricide... or Daddy doesn’t care. Gabriel just couldn’t work out which was worse.

“Michael and Lucifer need particular vessels for their Apocalyptic battle on the Earthly plain and,” he waved a deceptively careless hand, “do you see where I’m going with this?”

“No,” Sam spluttered, like it rhymed with ‘duh’.

Gabriel growled, patience wearing thin. He responded tightly, “You and Dean, Sam. You’re descended from Cain and Abel; you’re the vessels for Michael and Lucifer.”

“Well that’s easy, then,” Sam shrugged, “We just don’t say ‘yes’.”

“I’m hoping to prevent the need for refusal at all, kid,” Gabriel relaxed back into his chair. “It’s even simpler than that: stop Hell popping Lucifer out of his box and this whole thing is a damp squib for the celestial history books. Which reminds me, we should probably track down whichever prophet is writing said celestial history book.”

“Prophet?” Sam all but squeaked, and it would have been funny but Gabriel did appreciate that he was dumping a lot of information on the kid’s head on four hours sleep, a hangover and one, lone cup of coffee.

“Oy,” the archangel hung his head. They didn’t have time for him to sit and explain everything and Sam clearly wanted answers to every question, right now. “Listen, those demons knew you were here and more will come. We need to leave.”

Sam nodded, though the little wince he gave suggested that his hangover rebelled. He set the empty mug down, “Couldn’t you just kill them?”

“I could, but it’s a pain in the ass and it’d be far easier for you to pack up your stuff and I’ll take us, your bags and the car somewhere safe.”

“We can head to Bobby’s - I’d only have to tell him all of this again anyway.”

Gabriel watched as Sam puttered around the room, looking lighter than perhaps he’d ever seen the kid – although the memory of the boys playing electrician in Crawford Hall, with Sam’s terrible acting as they rumbled his janitorial disguise, came to mind. They were far lighter then and for a second Gabriel hated being the Messenger once more, bringing this news to Sam’s door. Even back in the day, he’d rarely been called on to deliver good news. Except that time he delivered the Good News but, whatever.

He consoled himself with the thought that if it weren’t for him, Sam would probably be unknowingly dancing Lilith’s tune for foreseeable, but it still sucked.

“Gabriel? I’m ready.”

He didn’t realise he’d all but zoned out until Sam was standing over him, dressed and with a rucksack over his shoulder. It was the first time the kid had called him by his name, the first time anyone had called him by name for a long time. It struck something inside him, maybe his long hidden grace, maybe not, but it was pleasant and warm. He decided he’d quite like it if that were to happen every time Sam called him by name.

Gabriel stood and disposed of the chair, stepping right up into Sam’s personal space. “You just think of where we need to be, and I’ll make sure we all get there in the right number of pieces.”

“Funny,” Sam rolled his eyes, thinking resolutely of Bobby’s house, every surface covered in books and reference materials, the yard outside. It was a rest stop, a home, and a library; Sam remembered the dusty smell, the way he always relaxed after Bobby had tested them with every method he knew and offered them a beer...

As he closed his eyes, Gabriel reached up to brush his fingers against Sam’s temple.

 

\--

Gabriel took a step back from Sam once he was certain they’d arrived where Sam had intended; they were stood on the porch of Bobby’s home and the Impala was resting as though they could have just pulled up, hours of driving behind them.

As it was, it had been scant milliseconds and Gabriel watched Sam turn gingerly, taking in the sensation of near-instantaneous travel.

With all the excitement, the rude awakening and the coffee, Sam had apparently forgotten that it was only the middle of the night; he blinked, frowning at the sky. It was the deep, bruised purple-blue-black that meant sunrise was still a few hours away. Gabriel listened to Sam exhale slowly. “How did we do that?”

And how could Gabriel even begin to explain the power, the speed and beauty of flight? It wasn’t even just flight, not over such tiny distances; as soon as he took off he was landing again and he barely had to beat his wings – taking inanimate, wholly separate entities like cars is a different game and it’s not so much flight as moving reality around them instead. “It’s ...difficult to explain in physical terms you’d understand,” and when a bitch-face threatened to break out across Sam’s face at the patronising words, eventually Gabriel settled for: “I moved us.”

After a moment, Sam seemed to accept this and he nodded, “So that sound...?”

Gabriel blinked, trying to look innocent. “What sound?” It wasn’t a look he bothered with too often, and it had never worked well on the Winchesters. It wasn’t a surprise when Sam didn’t let it go.

“I was like, I don’t know,” Sam paused, looking away at the light on in Bobby’s living room. “It was like... wind or something.”

The archangel said nothing, but a smirk began to twist his lips.

The dawning realisation on Sam’s face was pretty funny, and Gabriel was once again given a front-row seat to Sam’s intellectual prowess as he connected some dots. “Oh, my God. That was you,” it wasn’t a question.

“Angels have wings, Sammy,” Gabriel replied solemnly, hardly managing to hold the serious expression for half a minute. He grinned, breaking the moment completely and rubbing his palms together with relish. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m _starved_. Let’s take this party inside, what do you say?”

“Don’t call me Sammy,” he protested, almost absently as he shook his head, baffled, with a smile setting off his dimples. “Yeah, sure; Bobby’s ...up, apparently.”

“Hmm,” Gabriel, over the rising sense of pride at having made Sam genuinely smile, could smell the vapours of liquor clinging to empty bottles littering Bobby’s ground floor. He figured he was going to have to either snap the man sober or wait until he surfaced later in the morning; Bobby was moments from unconsciousness. He was beginning to wonder what it was about him lately that seemed to put drunken hunters in his way.

Sam opened the door, the mechanism giving way too easily in Gabriel’s opinion. For a seasoned hunter, one who had freshly painted devil’s traps drying in a salted, iron-clad bunker underground at that very moment, it seemed inexplicably lax. They stepped inside, shutting the door behind them.

“Bobby?”

“Sam?” The voice drifted quietly through the house, reedy and slurred.

Sam sighed, “Yeah, so he’s pretty wasted. Make yourself comfortable and I’ll get him upstairs.”

Gabriel offered to sober the man up, but Sam shook his head, glancing around the empty bottle-littered living room with a sad gaze. “No, we should let him sleep.” He shrugged, and as Sam walked towards the kitchen, Gabriel stayed put. He listened idly as Sam murmured at Bobby, who was clearly beyond protesting too hard as only a few moments later, Sam was leading the older man up the stairs.

It was the least Gabriel could do to click a glass of water and some aspirin to Bobby’s bedside table, in preparation. Hunters’ instincts wouldn’t let him sleep for too long, after all, and hair of the dog really wasn’t the best thing for a hangover at his age.

As he waited for Sam to return, tuning out Bobby’s drunken murmurs about family, Dean and his long-gone wife, Gabriel perused the books stacked on every available surface; he snapped all the empty bottles to a nearby recycling plant and he looked beyond the floorboards and windows to see the intricate warding latticing the property.

It really was a work of art, Gabriel had to admit, but he’d definitely have to add a few touches here and there; there were more entities in this world than dreamt of in Singer’s philosophy and soon enough, it would come a-knockin’ for the Winchesters.

For Dean, and for Sam.

“Thanks for that,” Sam said, and Gabriel, with his back to the kid, winced as the highly inappropriate ‘ _speaking of the devil_ ’ expression sprang to mind. “He’ll appreciate it in the morning.”

“You know, it would be quicker to sober him up my way,” Gabriel reiterated as he turned to find Sam leaning against the door-frame of the living room.

He shook his head, “It wouldn’t do you any favours to mess with him. It’s not the best foot to start off on.”

“Worked with you,” Gabriel shrugged with an irreverent grin, stuffing his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels.

It was when Sam smiled back that he realised with growing amazement that he, Gabriel, was going to stop the Apocalypse in its tracks. He could stop Sam travelling the dark road towards Lucifer and it would start just like this: by showing Sam a way to live which didn’t rely upon vengeance and anger to push him through from day to day; by showing Sam a life worth living and more – that he had people to live it _with_.

He could be sure Sam would never be burned away by the Morningstar’s cold, bright grace.

He couldn’t be sure that this was his Father’s plan, but he was sure enough that he was acting for the right reasons, and that had to count for something. He felt more like the Archangel he’d once been than he had since leaving Heaven, and he had to admit that it felt good to have a divine purpose again. And of course, eventually telling Michael and Lucifer where they could shove their world-annihilating spat was just icing on that particularly delicious cake.

After a long moment, while Gabriel considered how awesome his plan was, it dawned on both him (and apparently Sam at the same moment) that they were standing in Bobby’s living room, saying nothing and simply grinning at each other in the dark, wee hours of the morning.

“So,” Sam coughed awkwardly, “Food?”

Gabriel lifted his hand and waggled his fingers in a mime of a click. “What are you in the mood for?”

 

\--

Through their near-enough-to-midnight snack, Sam asked all the little questions he’d slowly been compiling throughout his life, from ‘ _do atheists go to Heaven_?’ to ‘ _who was closest: Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, or Kevin Smith_ ’.

It was afterwards that Sam eventually pulled out the really big question like he'd been working up the courage all along with the more trivial ones before, just as Gabriel was relaxing into his wild story-telling with vivid truths in his answers.

"So, there’s a God, right?" Sam folded his arms on the kitchen table and leaned forward, eager but phrasing himself very carefully, "God created angels and... you called him ‘Dad’."

"There is a Father, who art in Heaven,” he replied glibly. After a moment’s thought, he added, “More or less.”

He slumped down in the dining chair uncomfortably, idly wishing he didn't have the geekier of the two brothers to deal with for the foreseeable future. It was going to be one inconvenient, unavoidable question after another, until and probably beyond Dean's return.

“More or less?” Sam repeated. “So why would he let an apocalypse happen?”

Gabriel groaned, “Sam, please. Things with my Father are...,” he searched for the right word, but in the end he could only come back to, “Complicated. Some other time, yeah?”

He hoped Sam would leave it be for now; if anyone could understand a less-than-ideal parental relationship, it would be the younger Winchester.

Sam raised a sceptical eyebrow but shrugged. “I guess. So do you have an actual plan?”

“In so many words?” Gabriel scoffed, “No.”

“You must have connections... allies?” Sam suggested. “And you said we just have to make sure Lilith doesn’t free Lucifer, so we just need to kill Lilith.”

“If only it were that straight-forward,” the archangel replied fervently. He was about to explain why the pagans were _a very bad idea_ and that Lilith was a whole other clusterfuck waiting to happen, but there was a stirring in the air upstairs and so he and Sam weren’t going to be alone in their conversation for much longer. “Bobby’s waking up, so I’ll explain everything once you’ve talked him out of trying to stake me.”

Sam’s brow furrowed, “You can tell that from - never mind, of course you can.”

Gabriel grinned and shrugged, as if to say ‘ _I’m just that awesome._ ’

They waited in silence for Bobby to down a couple of painkillers with his water, change his clothes and pad downstairs.

"Sam? S'good to see you, boy," Bobby's voice was gruff with his hangover as he shuffled into the kitchen. He took slow sips from the glass of water, and Gabriel surreptitiously cured the mild case of alcohol poisoning gradually. When Bobby saw Gabriel, he stopped dead, fingers twitching for the gun he didn’t have and couldn’t reach. "Why is there a Trickster in my kitchen?"

Sam shot Gabriel a very eloquent ' _don't say a word_ ' look before focusing solely on Bobby. "He's not just a Trickster, Bobby.”

The look he got from Bobby in that moment had him elaborating quickly.

“Dean's in Hell because they need him to start the Apocalypse and this... He’s the archangel Gabriel."

Bobby looked from Sam to Gabriel and back and as the pregnant pause dragged on, Gabriel decided not to look into Bobby's mind and instead let himself be surprised.

He was. Surprised, that is, and it was something he shared with Sam as the older hunter shook his head ruefully.

"You boys never did anything by half," Bobby snorted, "Don't know why you'd bother to start now."

After Bobby was situated at the table with coffee and breakfast, blessedly hangover free, he finally spoke to Gabriel. "An archangel, huh? How come no-one’s ever seen an angel before?”

“We – and I use that term pretty loosely now – don’t interfere anymore. Or at least, we haven’t for two thousand years,” Gabriel smiled ruefully. “Earth’s about to be crawling with angels.”

“Alright. You boys start at the beginning,” at Gabriel’s snort, Bobby clarified, “What’s this about the Apocalypse?”

 

\--

Every time they ran low on coffee in their cups, Gabriel replenished it. He was outstandingly patient, explaining that sixty-six seals of a possible six hundred and-then-some needed to be broken. He left out exactly why Dean was in Hell, simply emphasising that separating the brothers this way would help Hell tap Sam. He managed not to say that Dean was there to break a seal himself. It wasn’t a lie, but the omission of truth was starting to build and it was going to kick him in the ass sometime soon.

He explained what the last seal entailed, but not the first. He implied it was a foregone conclusion and nothing more; when they found out, they’d hate him for that.

Gabriel felt the plan building in his mind. When their questions ran dry, when they were itching to reach for books and weapons and anything to see them through to the end of this war, he filled their mugs with coffee and explained. “We need to kill Lilith before the sixty-fifth seal is broken, and so we need to prevent as many seals from breaking as possible. We can’t do that alone.”

“Can we even do that at all?” Sam pointed out. “She has hundreds to choose from.”

Gabriel shrugged. “She’s a sucker for the classics, so she’ll try and get a few of the big ones. She’ll Raise the Witnesses, and you can bet she’ll try and raise Samhain.”

“Oh, so no pressure then,” Bobby rolled his eyes.

“I have some people I can tap. Maybe,” he added. Oh, he really didn’t want to do this, but time will be limited one the first seal is broken and the three of them couldn’t stop this alone. They couldn’t count on Dean yet, and the angel assigned to keep him on the path to Michael couldn’t be trusted either. They needed back up. They needed... _pagans_. “If you two can hang tight here, go about business as usual, then I can call in some favours with the old Gods.”

Sam leaned forward in his chair. “Why can’t we just go, kill Lilith now and stop this whole thing in its tracks.”

“Because you won’t get Dean back that way, Sam,” Gabriel said sympathetically. “Hell won’t let him go until they think you’re ready, and Heaven won’t rescue Dean until they think he’s ready.” It was almost the truth. “Until Dean’s back, we don’t touch Lilith.”

 

\--

Gabriel’s visits to Sam and Bobby were erratic at best, occurring between searches and checks on another seal or visits to yet another potential ally. It was two weeks into this strange alliance when he flew to Sam’s side to find him stretched out on the hood of one of Bobby’s wrecked sedans, beer in hand, watching the sun go down.

Sam took a slow swallow from the half-full bottle. “How long, do you think?”

“How long what?” He followed Sam’s gaze to the swirls of red and orange in the sunset sky. It dawned on him what Sam was asking, but he let the kid explain himself anyway.

Sam’s impatience bled into the words. “Until Dean comes back?”

Gabriel softened. For Sam’s sake, he hoped it was soon; for Dean’s too. “I don’t know.”

 

\--

It took another three weeks - a month of Gabriel's infrequent, unpredictable company and six weeks without his brother - for Sam to finally lash out. It was longer than Gabriel had expected, and he was almost a little proud of Sam’s restraint.

"Just go and get him, Gabriel! You're a frickin' archangel, the _Messenger_! You could be in and out, quick as a flash, right?" He stopped pacing Bobby's living room and turned his wide, pleading eyes on Gabriel. "Right? Why do we have to wait until They say we’re ready?"

The collective 'They' had become their shorthand for the powers of Heaven and Hell which were determined to see this Apocalypse come to pass, and the term worked well enough. Of course, Sam was taking a lot of this on faith, as Gabriel was the only angel he'd met and it wasn't like either side was declaring themselves until Dean kick-started the party; Gabriel couldn't decide whether Sam was being smarter-than-the-average or just plain foolish in trusting him, but he was persistently thankful for it either way.

Gabriel sighed, because if a month of Sam Winchester had taught him just one thing, it was that even God's Messenger and Angel of Judgement was not immune to the kid's puppy-eyed expression. "Yeah, Sam, I could. I’ve told you that before. Frankly, there is no faster angel in creation if I put my mind to it," and any other time, he'd deliver that boastfully but now it was a source of some bitterness. "But as soon as I make my presence known and declare my side in this?"

He stood up out of the chair he'd been lounging in all morning, and while it would never give him the height advantage, he did feel like he was impressing his point upon Sam. "I could get Dean's soul up and out. I could even be fast enough to rebuild his body and put him back in it before the Host realised who I was and mobilised to stop me, but as soon as they do? Michael or Raphael would strike me down where I stood, toss Dean's soul back down to the Pit for Alistair and his band of merry men to play with and wipe your memory of my entire existence. And that? That is _square fucking one_ , Sam."

Sam was silent, the fight all gone from him; it was Bobby, who'd managed to stay well out of the preceding argument and had apparently only just surfaced from the panic room, who spoke up. "Who's Alistair?"

The archangel bit back a curse. He'd always let his mouth run away with him, perhaps a hazard of being his Father's mouthpiece. He rolled his eyes at his own stupidity at giving a Winchester a mystery. "Alistair... is a demon."

"We got that," Bobby huffed, and Gabriel heard the unspoken ‘idjit’. "What does he want with Dean?"

"This thing," Sam finally looked up from the spot he'd been studying. "This thing Dean's going to do..."

Gabriel knew he was impatient, another failing, and he steamrolled over Sam's stilted question. "Dean is going to break the first of the sixty-six Seals which maintain Lucifer's cage. The first Seal..."

"Oh, no." He saw the dawning realisation on Bobby's face. He knew Bobby was compiling a list of Lilith’s likely targets, but the first and last were the constants, the definite bookends in Hell’s plan. He wasn’t sure if Bobby had disclosed much of that list with Sam, but since the kid was looking a little lost and pissed it was a fair bet that he was in the dark. But Bobby knew...

"Yes," the archangel was quiet, sympathetic. "That's why they wanted John so badly, why they drove Dean a hard bargain to a one year contract. Time passes differently in Heaven and Hell and they couldn't wait over a millennium for a standard ten-year contract on Earth to expire."

"What is the first Seal?" Sam bit the words out, every muscle in his body tense like he was expecting a physical blow instead.

Gabriel opened his mouth, but for all his verbal sparring and the way he'd run on since Sam exploded, he couldn't make the words come. He stepped forward, fighting the urge to reach out because even if Sam lashed out and couldn't actually harm him, Gabriel wasn't sure he could take that rejection right now. Their tentative alliance could be made or broken on how Sam took this moment and Gabriel wasn't honestly sure which way it would go.

It was Bobby who cleared his throat awkwardly and pushed on ahead. "'And it is written that the first Seal shall be broken ...when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break'," he gave a shuddering sigh.

"Alistair is Hell's chief torturer," Gabriel whispered. "Dean's gonna be on his rack and it's only a matter of time before Dean picks up the knife as his apprentice."

All that could be heard in Bobby's living room for long, full minutes was the slow inhale and exhale of the two humans and the archangel's pointed, careful silence.

Sam's breath gradually became quicker as his gaze flickered from Bobby, to Gabriel and back, over and over, until, "Get him out."

Gabriel didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Sam, I can't," and his voice broke on the syllable shamefully.

"Get. Him. Out," Sam repeated, every consonant crisp and forceful.

"I can't."

"Get him out; get Dean out of there, _get him out_!"

"I _can't_!" Gabriel snapped, grace leaking into the words and rattling the windows, dust shaking from the walls and fixtures Bobby hadn't ever found the time to clean enough. He and Sam were notably advancing on each other, and while Bobby clearly wanted to step in, Gabriel threw out a hand in warning to stop him. This was between him and Sam, it had to be, because Gabriel had put them in this position by turning up and revealing himself in the first place.

"Can't?" Sam sneered down at the archangel, "You _won't_."

"Yeah, you know what, Sam? I _won't_ , because as much as it's going to kill your brother to live with it, he'll do it and it's our only option now."

"We could fight."

"No, we couldn't. You, Bobby and I against the combined might of the Host and Lilith's army?" Gabriel took a step back, suddenly aware that he was a hair's breadth from being chest-to-chest with Sam. "No, Sam."

Sam dragged a shaking hand through his hair, eyes boring down into Gabriel's. "Well, d'you know what? Fuck you, Gabriel," he snapped, stumbling backwards. "Fuck you and your family's problems." He stormed out of the living room, up the stairs and to his room, the slamming door shaking more dust loose.

Gabriel sagged, tipping his face skyward though all he was faced with was a painted ceiling. "I..." He wasn't even sure what he meant to say, but finally words refused to come.

And Bobby, who hadn’t moved an inch since quoting scripture, sighed. "I hear ya.”

 

\--

Gabriel waited for Sam to come to him. He’d put the ball in Sam’s court, and for all his impatience, he was beginning to rediscover some of the more angelic traits he’d tried to leave behind; compassion was one of them, and if anyone deserved it out of Gabriel right now, it was Sam.

He was starting to wonder if he was even capable of leaving Sam alone, of _not_ screwing the kid up in every conceivable way.

It wasn’t just the apocalypse, Gabriel was sure. The Mystery Spot had been as much about saving Sam’s soul as it was about trying to end the cycle of deals and revenge. He’d been intrigued when he’d seen the two vessels, nearly two years ago now on a non-descript college campus. They’d seemed no-where near ready, too close and too trusting of each other. He’d baited Sam and Dean into bickering and fighting, trying to see Michael and Lucifer below the surface; it hadn’t quite worked and it wasn’t that straight-forward. He saw love, trust and respect, and it hurt to think that both Heaven and Hell were going to twist and tarnish the Winchesters until they were ready to fight each other to the death, housing the two most formidable, self-righteous angels in creation. Gabriel couldn’t let that happen; couldn’t give these boys to his brothers to use up and burn away. The pagan approach hadn’t worked so now he had to call up the old, compassionate angelic ways with a softer style. Hence the waiting.

He could feel Sam inside the house, still pacing a worn track into the carpet of his bedroom. Sat on the hood of one of the cars in Bobby’s yard – the old, battered Ford that Sam preferred nowadays when he needed time and space to lie back and look at the stars, but couldn’t bear to do it on the hood of the Impala without his brother – Gabriel felt Sam open the bedroom door.

The footfalls down the stairs were as strong and regular as a drumbeat to Gabriel, and he tensed when Sam reached the bottom. Bobby was at his desk and had been studiously ignoring the both of them. Gabriel had been pretending not to hear the mutterings of ‘idjit’ the older hunter had been repeating every few minutes, but as Sam drew closer to Bobby in the confines of the house, Gabriel listened closely.

“ _Has he gone_?” Sam sounded suspiciously like someone kicked his figurative puppy.

Bobby was quiet but clear. “ _No, he’s outside._ ”

“ _Bobby..._ ”

“ _I get it, kid. But if it’s the price of getting Dean back..._ ”

Sam’s sigh seemed to ripple the very air between he and Gabriel. “ _Yeah._ ”

Gabriel was careful not to move as Sam walked to the front door, stopped long enough to spot him on the hood of a junker not far away, and started towards him. He could hear Sam’s thumping, strong heartbeat and it was a more relaxing rhythm than his pacing or steps on the stairs had been; the archangel found himself relaxing.

He didn’t say anything in greeting, simply climbed up to sit alongside Gabriel on the hood. He lay back against the windshield, mimicking Gabriel’s orchestrated sprawl. “I’d say I’m sorry,” Sam offered eventually, “But I’m not. This is... fucked up.”

Gabriel nodded, but when he realised that Sam was – like him – staring up at the stars and couldn’t see the motion, he replied, “I know.”

Apparently resigned, Sam continued, “So, what else about this big picture aren’t you telling me?”

“A lot, Sam,” the archangel admitted with a cringe and a sigh. “I couldn’t possibly begin to tell you a fraction of what you want to know.”

“What about what I need to know?”

“You’ll know, I promise.”

Silence descended, but it was a little less hostile, a little more comfortable than it had been before.

“Where’s God in all this, Gabriel?”

For as long as a minute, Gabriel didn’t answer. To Sam’s credit, he didn’t pretend that Gabriel hadn’t heard; he simply waited. There was no way of escaping, and Gabriel was certain that if he deflected again, Sam would believe him... But this shell of honesty they’d made was too fragile for a lie or rejection, and perhaps Sam would feel better if he had the truth.

Even if it would break both their hearts.

“My Father...” Gabriel’s voice came out hoarser than he’d have liked and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “My Father left Heaven. It was a long time ago now. Our orders dried up and He disappeared. I was supposed to stay too, but...”

But he couldn’t; without a message, what was a Messenger? He didn’t have a role to throw himself into to avoid the loneliness and bitter arguments.

Gabriel swallowed tightly, getting the words out. “Michael and Raphael reacted differently; began to fight, enforcing some pretty harsh rules up there without any guidance from on high and it was the final straw, I guess. Last I knew, they were handing down their own orders through the ranks as if they were coming from our Father and the rest of the Host is none-the-wiser.”

Sam glanced at Gabriel quickly, before turning his eyes back to some arbitrary point in the night sky. “Wouldn’t they notice He wasn’t there?”

He scoffed, “Only four of us ever stood in His presence and there’re no prizes for working out which. The rest of the Host,” he laughed humourlessly as he finished, “Took it on faith.”

“Where did you go?”

“Everywhere,” Gabriel shrugged, “I just watched for a while, and though my brothers thought I was... I don’t know, _holidaying_ or something... I was building myself a vessel, something untraceable and unaccountable. By the time they decided I should stop mucking about and get back to the business of running Heaven, I was off their radar. I ducked around a few religions for a while and took up with the Norse gods as Loki. Even now, the majority don’t know I’m not just another pagan god like them.”

Gabriel tuned out everything, every sound, every thought, every shifting of an atom and focussed only on himself and Sam. With each steady breath, Sam’s shirt rustled and while he must be cold, he didn’t shiver. His fingers twitched slightly, but whatever aborted movement it signalled, Sam didn’t follow through. “But some of them do?”

“Oh, now, yeah. It’s a little hard to explain why I care about the Judeo-Christian Apocalypse if I don’t tell them who I am first,” Gabriel smiled ruefully. “Some of them took it badly. Some of them had already worked it out and were keeping quiet to see if they could use it to their advantage.”

Sam finally looked at Gabriel and let it hold. “How’s that going?”

“You know that saying about being as good as a chocolate fireguard?” He met Sam’s gaze.

“...Yeah?”

“At least you can eat the melted chocolate.”

Sam laughed unexpectedly, eyes closing and head tipping back, “Right.”

Gabriel found himself smiling at the sight. He hadn’t caused much joy in Sam’s life, but this moment was enough. It would have to be. They had too much coming at them now; they had to take these moments as they came. “Once Dean’s back,” he reluctantly broke into the lingering echo of Sam’s laugh in the yard, “Our priorities are making sure the Host doesn’t stop us, that Dean doesn’t invite Michael to our party and that Lucifer doesn’t get free. Which means,” Gabriel admitted with a grim, sarcastic smile, “We have to kill Lilith before the sixty-fifth Seal is broken.”

“The last one is her death, right?” Gabriel saw Sam’s fists clench, but didn’t call him on it. He’d probably be as gung-ho to avenge his brother’s death; actually, he had been, once.

“The death of Lucifer’s first demon,” he confirmed, dampening down the memories as best he could – it was getting harder to do that. “We don’t want to accidentally kick-start that party, and it could be just about anyone that kills her. Lilith wanted it to be you-”

Sam, clearly compiling some sort of mental How to Avert the Apocalypse map, checked, “That was where Ruby came in?”

“Yeah, and wasn’t that an awesome plan,” Gabriel said, more to himself than to Sam, unsure whether he was being sarcastic or earnest.

He’d seen what Sam could do when properly motivated by vengeance and a hunt; even after six lonely, difficult months on the back of hundreds of Tuesdays, Sam had still had it in him to track Gabriel down and beg for his brother back. He had no doubt that if Lilith had gotten her little minion to start pumping Sam full of demon blood, Sam would have popped Lucifer out of his cage unwittingly in his quest to kill her. Lilith had made herself the perfect bait, after all.

Sam may not have learned anything out of their encounter at the Mystery Spot, but Gabriel had.

He frowned as he gazed out over the carcasses of cars. “Once the middle sixty-four are gone, anyone can kill her in the right place and Lucifer walks.”

“But I thought he needed my permission to take me as a vessel?”

He could feel the rising panic in Sam and reassured him with a nod as he caught Sam’s gaze. “He does. You’re a _true_ vessel, but you aren’t the only potential vessel. He’ll dupe some lonely, sad, desperate person into saying ‘yes’ to him, but he’ll start burning through him or her pretty quickly. They won’t be able to handle it, so he’ll start gunning for you.”

“So, make sure Lucifer doesn’t get out,” Sam took a deep, steeling breath. “Check.”

 

\--

It wasn’t like the knowledge was just _there_ , in his angelic-equivalent of a neural centre. It wasn’t as if he simply _knew_ all of a sudden; it took Gabriel a moment or two to distinguish the rippling sense of ‘ _trouble’s afoot_ ’ for what it was, even though it was something he’d had been looking out for.

He’d been looking out for it for three months now.

It didn’t start in any place in particular, more like it shot through him – front to back like bullet through his grace – and in its wake he was left gasping and disoriented. In the femtoseconds that followed, he wondered what the hell it was, and then it was like someone turning on a light and illuminating the dark corners of the world.

Dean had broken the first Seal.

 _Game on_ , is what the shockwave said. _It’s beginning._

Gabriel glanced around himself, ruefully; it had taken him three days to get everything he needed for this ritual, and now he’d have to abandon it. He stretched out his grace to find Sam, following the small thread that connected them through shared experience and not a little possessiveness, through the earth and to a little motel in Montana.

When Gabriel arrived, Sam was packing and barely spared him a glance – the flutter of wings was a familiar sound to the hunter by now.

“Hey, I was just leaving; only a poltergeist in the end,” he grinned. The archangel said nothing, and the uncharacteristic silence was probably what had Sam frowning, looking up and stilling his hands. “Gabriel?”

He cleared his throat; an affectation, but he wasn’t at all sure his voice would work in the correct dimension. Now would be a pretty shitty time to deafen Sam accidentally. “It happened.”

“What- Oh,” Sam nodded absently, looking away from Gabriel and down at his half-full duffel, then to the rolled up socks in his hand. “ _Oh_.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel breathed the word out.

“So he’ll have... they’ll be...” Sam sagged, a heartbreaking sight to Gabriel as that tall frame crumpled in on itself and Sam let the motel bed take his weight. “How long?”

Gabriel walked around to stand in front of Sam – with Sam sitting, Gabriel had the rare opportunity to look down at the kid instead of up, but it wasn’t something he found he relished. It wasn’t powerful or condescending; it reminded him that he was the one with all the answers, he was the one trying to run this show. It wasn’t his place... and yet Sam was looking up to him every step of the way. It was a lot of responsibility, and Gabriel had been running from that for millennia. It was meant to be Him, not Gabriel.

But He hadn’t exactly been keen on responsibility lately.

In the end, he just tried to broach the facts: “Heaven will have despatched an angel to break Dean free immediately. But time... remember how I said it won’t be the same?”

Sam nodded dumbly.

“It’ll be a while before that angel gets there, and Hell won’t let him go easy just because they have what they want. They’ll have to fight their way out - it ain’t gonna be a picnic.”

“Ballpark?”

Gabriel shrugged and willed his hands still – he was too close to reaching out to comfort his unexpected charge and he expected Sam would take it as pity or weakness, not a desire to make this clusterfuck of a situation easier. “I just don’t know, Sam. But I can feel it when there are other angels on Earth if I want to, and I could probably sense Dean specifically when he’s close to surfacing, along with whichever goody-two-shoes they send after him. I can get us straight to Pontiac.”

Sam paled further. “He’ll wake up in... Oh God.”

“We’ll be there, Sam,” the archangel promised, taking an instinctive step forward. “And I don’t know anyone better at digging up graves than you.” His reward for the highly inappropriate quip was a huff of reluctant laughter and a quelling glare. “He’ll open his eyes and see the sky, I promise you.”

“Can you take us back to Bobby’s? He needs to know and... I need to get drunk.”

“Sure thing, kiddo.”

 

\--

Bobby had long since bowed out, hitting the bottle harder and faster and lacking the metabolism of a hunter in his mid-twenties to sustain him. He’d grumbled a few warnings to behave themselves and to not, under any circumstances, mess with his filing system before slouching off to bed.

But Sam was still going strong – wasted, but strong - reclined on Bobby’s sofa, his feet and a decent proportion of his legs hanging over the arm. His head was propped up on the opposite arm just enough to give him one hell of a crick tomorrow, but allowing him to lie down and drink his beer without drowning. “So how does this work?”

“How does what work,” asked Gabriel, his chin propped on his fist as he watched over the younger Winchester. He’d started off matching the two hunters drink for drink, but once it became clear that Sam was a lightweight with every reason to drink away his sorrows once again, he sobered up and resigned himself to playing nurse.

He probably wouldn’t wear the outfit.

Maybe.

“Seals and stuff,” Sam slurred.

Gabriel sighed, “Come on, Sam, you know this.”

“Yeah, but...” He huffed and took another long mouthful of beer. “How? I mean, can we even stop her breaking them?”

“Some,” he said, grudgingly. “But like I’ve said, there are hundreds and there’s no guarantees about which ones get her blood flowing.”

“Ew.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes fondly. “We’ll do what we can, but we need to break whatever protective magic she’s using so we can find her at all. Otherwise we’re flying blind until after the big six-five when she comes knocking on our door.”

Sam’s face fell as he frowned. “You think she still wants me to do it?”

“Eh, who knows. She’s a stickler for ritual and it would make for a wonderfully ironic moment,” but Gabriel knew he couldn’t let it come to that. “If Lucifer gets free, he’ll go gunning straight for you, or take a bargain-basement vessel in the meantime. So let’s not do that, huh?”

“I’m all for ganking the bitch before hand, no question,” Sam gestured wildly with his beer bottle, sloshing a little on the carpet. Somehow, judging by the state of the carpet as it was, Gabriel didn’t think anyone would notice. “I just wanna know how badly we can fuck up beyond all recognition and destroy the whole world.”

“Oh,” the archangel said airily, “Very easily.”

“So, educated guesses then?”

“Educated guesses.”

They lapsed into silence.

Sam tried to take another mouthful of beer, only to find the bottle was empty. “Hey, Gabriel?” He gestured with the bottle, “Somethin’ stronger?”

Gabriel clicked his fingers with a shrug.

It took another forty minutes and a remarkable number of scotch-refilling snaps for Sam to give up. “Gabriel,” he said very deliberately, “I don’t think my legs work.”

“Alright kid, I’m cutting you off,” said Gabriel as he stood up and dusted off his jeans.

Sam grinned goofily up at him, “Aw, barkeep, just one more? For the road?”

Rolling his eyes, the archangel pulled Sam from the couch. “Yeah, no. Time for all good little Winchesters to be in bed.”

“‘m not a good little Winchester,” replied Sam morosely.

Pretending carrying Sam up the stairs was an effort, Gabriel tried to lighten the mood. “You certainly ain’t little. C’mon, sleep this off and tomorrow we can start our seal hunt.”

Sam mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like ‘club sandwiches not seals’ because he’s a massive dork, but he was mostly asleep on his feet. They were only half way up Bobby’s stairs, so Gabriel ceased making a show of walking at Sam’s drunken pace, swooped Sam up in to his arms like a dashing hero and popped up to his bedside to deposit him under the comforter.

 

\--

_Hell of a day_ , he thought with a grimace, sitting on the hood of the beat-up Ford.

So the game was afoot. They had no way of knowing which seals Lilith was going to gun for, and they knew it. They could make educated guesses, but that’s all they’d be. What they needed was a heads-up, to track either Lilith or her minions, but he had a feeling the world would be crawling with demons causing trouble for the sake of it and that Lilith would be keeping her head down until the main event. Gabriel couldn’t rule out the possibility they’d come back for Sam, either, but they’d have a fight on their hands if they tried.

When he suddenly felt the presence of another angel on earth, he cursed himself for being so stupid because _of course_ they could get a heads-up: somewhere out there was the prophet writing all of this down for the Book of Winchester. Gabriel only just resisted slapping himself in the forehead. The visiting angel - whoever had taken up responsibility for giving heaven’s messages - was very near to boot, certainly on the continental US, and Gabriel closed his eyes and tried to seek out exactly where. He wasn’t stupid enough to drop in on the prophet while another angel was present, but as soon as the prophet was alone, he was going to take a sneaky peek at the chosen scribe.

It took a few minutes, evidently there was a lot to convey, but Gabriel tracked the grace of the visitor until it shifted toward the heavenly dimension. Gabriel gave it another few tortuous minutes, just to be sure the angel wasn’t going to return, and then he followed the feeling right to the living room of the prophet. Gabriel kept himself invisible to human eyes, not wanting to spook the guy, but it seemed the prophet was intent on his laptop.

He didn’t look like any prophet Gabriel had ever seen before and that was certainly saying something. Rumpled and sleep-deprived, sporting quite the untrimmed beard and haunted eye-bags of a man who drank too much coffee and rested too little, this prophet was a bit of a mess. That, Gabriel had expected. Even the bathrobe and ratty shorts with a coffee-stained t-shirt were within the typical purview of a prophet. So why did this one seem so… different? The laptop, perhaps; Gabriel used to give messages to early prophets with wax tablets and papyrus.

The prophet say with his back to Gabriel as the archangel took a look at a shelf full of paperbacks, specifically one called _Trickster Tuesday_. With a gleeful grin he realised the cheeky son of a bitch was publishing the Winchester’s stories, and he pulled that particular volume off the shelf to take a look. The cover featured two buff, attractive brothers all right, plaid shirts and all. Oh, he was getting his hands on these soon alright, Sam’s reaction was going to be hilarious. He wondered if the prophet would notice this one going missing - the spines were pristine, he certainly wasn’t re-reading them. Despite being unseeable to the human eye, he snuck a glance back at the prophet to judge if he could get away with a bit of petty theft -

...only to find a very lucid, very not-at-all-possible gaze trained on him.

“Um,” Gabriel said eloquently, quickly replacing the book on the shelf. The prophet seemed amused but remained silent, watching Gabriel who was still certain he was invisible to the human eye. He knew this worked on prophets, he’d done it before. Oh god, he wasn’t _that_ rusty, was he?

The prophet’s lips twitched, forming a very quick grin before it was tempered.

Gabriel decided to just wing it. As it were.

“Hey there, prophet of the Lord. How’s life with the Winchesters treating you, because I’ve got to say, it’s not an awful lot of fun right now.”

The prophet raised an eyebrow.

“Right. Understatement,” Gabriel blew out a breath, feeling quite restless. He glanced back at the shelf of _Supernatural_ books. “Nice publishing venture you have there. Surprised more prophets didn’t think of that, though I suppose some may consider profiting from the word of God to be a bit crass. But hey - a prophet’s gotta profit, am I right?”

Still, the prophet said nothing, although he was smiling an awful lot. Gabriel found it a little unsettling and finally gave up the chatty routine to become simply plaintive. “Alright, how come you can see me and what’s with the Silent Bob impression? You know I’m not here to hurt you, because if I was, someone would have come running by now. You also know who I am, because hello, you’re the Winchester prophet. So come on, level with me here. You know what I want.”

“Yes, Gabriel,” said the prophet finally, his voice soft and remarkably strong for a man who looked like he should be more jittery and timid. “I know what you want.”

“So?” The archangel waved a hand in an encouraging manner.

“ _So_ ,” imitated the prophet, “If I were to give it to you, do you think that would not defeat the object of this entire experience?”

Gabriel blinked. He stared at the prophet, baffled. He looked down at the floor, he swallowed, and he looked back to the man in the bathrobe looking far too serene for Gabriel’s liking. “What the hell?”

The prophet laughed. “Wow, this is fun. I thought it would be fun, but it’s good to be surprised. Gabriel,” the prophet sobered, adjusting his robe and adopting a serious expression. It seemed almost familiar. “Why should I give you what you want?”

“You know why,” whined Gabriel, and also, what the hell? He never whined.

The prophet was unmoved. “Convince me.”

Gabriel huffed and glared at the dirty carpet, almost stamping his foot. As a result, he missed the prophet’s sober face slip to reveal a cheeky grin and soft, compassionate eyes. The sober expression returned, however, just as Gabriel acquiesced. “Right. Fine. I would like for you to help us - by which I mean Sam, Bobby, myself and eventually Deano - to identify which seals Lilith chooses to break in order to prevent the rise of Lucifer and, consequently, the apocalypse.”

There was a pause. Gabriel thought he was pretty clear, but the prophet imitated Gabriel’s _go on_ gesture and the archangel huffed.

“Because?” Gabriel hazarded, and the prophet nodded. Fine, Gabriel would play this stupid game, but only because they needed the advantage. He took a deep breath and decided to express a few truths. “Because I do _not_ want the world to end? Because paradise on earth sounds like a great idea but then that means no more theatre and no more s’mores. No more wars, sure, but no more opportunity to watch human beings grow to the point where they grow beyond that. There’ll be no more crappy late night infomercials, no more movie montages about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport, no more Doctor Who or the Daily Show, or Neighbours. Paradise is boring, and hell on earth would be worse, and I like the world the way it is, the way it could be if we just let this experiment run its course. Humans are,” Gabriel tried to find a word to sum up what the felt, but he could only really settle on, “worth it.”

“And?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes and growled. “And I don’t want to watch my brothers fight over it, it’s stupid and petty. Lucifer is wrong and too proud to back down, and so is Michael for that matter, and so one of them would end up dead over this. It sucks. Best to just not let them fight and give them a few more millennia to cool down. One day they’ll realise just what humans are capable of, see all the amazing things they’ve done, and they’ll change their minds.” Gabriel wasn’t sure he totally believed that, but he hoped it was true. He sighed. “I just want to do right by this world, for a change. This is how to do that.”

The prophet looked contemplative, considering Gabriel. “Well,” he said eventually, “I have to say this is not what I expected to happen. It was all planned out, as much as human free will can account for such things. Sammael would rise, and through the brothers Winchester things would be resolved to a similar conclusion. Although,” the prophet said almost to himself, “their cool-off on the naughty step was to be in that cage, together. This is neater, spares more lives. Not precisely a priority but certainly to be considered. Your involvement this early was a surprise.”

Gabriel was slowly backing away, backing up all the way until his back hit the wooden shelving unit and he couldn’t get further away without phasing through it or flying off. _Sammael_ , the prophet said. No-one called Lucifer that anymore. No-one had called him that for a long time. This wasn’t right, he needed to leave. This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this. Run. Go. Leave now. As if he could run. As if he could go _anywhere_ and not be found.

“Of course,” continued the prophet-who-was- _definitely-not-a-prophet_ , “This has changed your course for the better, but if I don’t strap those two down somewhere to hash out their issues then they may never come to terms…”

Not a prophet. Gabriel was motionless, standing still as though if he were just still enough, the lion would not notice him to maul him.

Oh, God.

“You were always the strongest, my son,” smiled the Father. “Quiet and sensitive but so sure of yourself. I am so very proud.”

Gabriel slid down the bookshelves, stricken. He pulled his knees to his chest and wanted, more than ever in his entire time on Earth, to be able to leave his vessel and stand in the presence of his Father once more. He opened his mouth but no sound would come.

Standing, the Father left his cheap office chair to kneel before Gabriel. “I cannot interfere, Gabriel, and for the complications it causes, I am sorry. But this is something that needs to be done by human hands, by the Winchesters and their allies. By you.” Gabriel’s eyes were swimming with tears. He blinked them away, only to have them spill down his cheeks. “Hush,” the Father reached out a hand and cupped Gabriel’s cheek, brushing aside the tears. “You have to continue to be strong, resilient, and brave. The Host will try to stop you, Lucifer’s servants will try to stop you. Humanity needs to save itself, Gabriel, and you can help them.”

This doesn’t change a thing, thought Gabriel, the turmoil of being so suddenly thrust into his Father’s presence waning in the light of more practical concerns. Questions like _where have you been_ and _why did you leave_ were set aside for: “What will you do?”

“I’m watching and waiting. I know how this ends, all possible endings. This isn’t a test for humanity, Gabriel. This is a test for my first children. I need to see… something.”

Ineffability. Just great, thought Gabriel as he shook his head. It wasn’t his place to question, but hell, he gave his place in the Host the finger a long time ago. He slowly stood, recovered himself. “So many of them could die,” Gabriel protested. “Humans and my brothers and sisters.”

“Casualties of war,” replied the Father, solemnly.

He refused to accept that. “This isn’t a game, Father. What happened to God being Love?”

The Father grimaced. “And what about ‘if you love something, set it free’?”

Gabriel blinked. “Well perhaps before deciding to set us all free, you should have set up a two-day workshop on free will for angels, or hell, just told us you were leaving. Strangely enough, things just carried on regardless. If that was your plan, Dad, it fucking sucked!”

A raised eyebrow was the Father’s only response, but Gabriel was on a roll.

“Man, you’ve got some nerve,” Gabriel had wanted to say so much to his Father over the long time since He’d left. These words were buried deep under pagan fire and blood, brutal and honest. “You left with no word - not Michael, nor me, not even Metatron. Silence from the Lord. It hurt, so badly, you cannot possibly understand. They decided you’d be back eventually, surely you were off deciding where next to raise a continent or playing God, hah, on some other planet. And when it became clear you weren’t coming back, and the garrisons were asking for orders, Michael just continued to make it up as he went along. Oh, it’s God’s will, surely. So sure, our Michael. Raphael was angry. Lucifer was gone and locked up. And I was devastated.”

Gabriel regarded his Father accusingly. “My life from then has been one big fuck you, and an immensely enjoyable one. I’m not asking for forgiveness, Father, I have no regrets. But I promise you, if any harm befalls those men, I will cut a swathe through the Host and party like only a pagan can.”

The Father rolled his eyes, “You always did have flair for the dramatic, Gabriel. Fine, do what you will, isn’t that rather the point? But before you go condemning your brothers and sisters to a bloody bacchanalic fate, consider this: only Michael and Raphael know I am no longer there. If the rest were to discover that, to discover that they can make their own decisions if they wish to, do you think they’ll just fall in line? You are creatures born of love, your grace is pure and bright. If you gave your family half the chance to experience humanity as you have, do you not credit them with the ability to change their minds?”

“Angels who rebel are made to Fall,” replied Gabriel. “I’ve seen a few over the years, sometimes perfectly unaware and more often driven mad. With Michael and Raphael in charge, there is no movement for change, they’ll strike down any who try.”

“We’ll see,” and the Father graced Gabriel with an enigmatic smile. Gabriel had always hated that smile.

Gabriel shook his head. “I think we’re done here,” he said bitterly. It was not the reunion he’d hoped for.

The Father, retreating into the guise of the prophet, only nodded and moved back to his office chair. “I will give you one warning, Gabriel. Dean Winchester will not return alone, or unmarked. You would do well to prepare for Castiel.” The Father turned away and began to type and, though it had been a long time, Gabriel knew a dismissal from his Father when he saw one.

 

\--

Gabriel took his time returning to Bobby’s, first flying furiously and, once he’d exhausted his ire, flying absentmindedly. His Father, the Holy Father, gave zero shits. Fine. It wasn’t entirely unexpected given the last two millennia. The motivation: giving angels sudden and unsolicited free will. Well, that was certainly unexpected, on top of being poorly managed and cruel. Certainly a mixed bag of Revelations.

It felt nice to just fly, to stretch his wings and savour the rush of existence around him. He rarely took the time to just enjoy his more angelic aspects, as much to avoid remembered pain as to fly (literally) under the radar.

Castiel. At one time, he knew every angel in every garrison. He distantly remembered Castiel and only as having not stood out from the crowd. Castiel, as he remembered, was diligent and loyal. It fit with what Gabriel had expected, if his Father was to be understood.

Castiel was the angel sent to retrieve Dean from Hell, and any day now they would be surfacing.


End file.
